Outline of wireless in Korea
Hanjoo Kim of the IITA (Institute of Information Technology Assessment), Daejoen, South Korea, supplies this nice outline of wireless in Korea. He adds that number portability has been required for some time and that, as in America, many problems and much confusion have resulted.
Brief history of mobile communications in Korea
From mid-1960s : IMTS service for government use only. [Editor's note: Motorola sold IMTS systems throughout the world.)
March 1984 : Inauguration of KMT (Korea Mobile Telecommunications Co.,) as a subsidiary of KTA (Korea Telecommunications Authority; the government-owned communication service carrier. It is now KT (Korea Telecom), a privatized telecom company)
May 1, 1984 : KMT begins AMPs service.
June, 1994 : KMT privatizes, with SK (Sun-Kyung Group) becoming the 1st major stockholder of KMT.
January, 1996 : Shinsegi Telecom (the second cellular service carrier in Korea) begins CDMA service in the Incheon area (very near to Seoul).
April, 1996 : KMT begins CDMA service in Seoul area. (Sun-Kyung Group Telecom)
March, 1997 : KMT changes name to SK Telecom.
October, 1997 : Three PCS service carriers (KT Freetel, LG Telecom, Hansol PCS) begin CDMA service at 1.7GHz.
April, 2000 : SK Telecom acquires Shinsegi Telecom. Retires the Shinsegi Telecom name.
October, 2000 : cdma2000-1x service launches.
December, 2000 : SK Telecom and KT Freetel get IMT-2000 licenses for W-CDMA.
May, 2001 : KT Freetel acquires Hansol PCS. KT Freetel retires the Hansol name.
August, 2001 : LG Telecom gets the IMT-2000 license for cdma2000 technology.
May, 2002 : cdma2000-1x EV-DO service begins. (SK Telecom insists that this service began in January 2002. But in the official statistics, subscribers to cdma2000-1x EV-DO first appear in May, 2002.)
December 2003 : Launch of W-CDMA service for field trial.
Editor's note. Some additional, though dated material was at the external link below:
http://www.3gnewsroom.com/country/south_korea.shtml